xxxHOLiC ficlets
by rallamajoop
Summary: Short, unconnected ficlets about the boys. May contain traces of donuts.
1. Ficlet 1

Between longer projects I'm known to turn out the odd short, untitled snippet of vaguely (and sometimes more solidly) Doumeki/Watanuki-ish fic. The stories I'll be posting here won't be connected and weren't quite worth posting on their own, but they should be able to provide some light entertainment.

* * *

The first thing Watanuki said when Doumeki found him standing outside after archery practice was, "I am _not_ waiting for you." 

"Okay," said Doumeki.

"I had to see a teacher about an assignment!" Watanuki told him, or, given the direction he was looking in and the volume of his voice, apparently told someone standing on the other side of the oval. "And then I had to fill in for someone else who wasn't there for cleaning duty! I didn't even realise your club was finishing until I happened to walk by on my way out."

Doumeki could have drawn attention to the fact that, coming from any part the school Watanuki might have needed to help clean, the archery field was in the opposite direction to the school gate, but he stuck with another, "Okay."

"But since we're both going in the same direction now, you can walk me to Yuuko's shop and I won't complain," Watanuki finished, already walking off in that direction. If he'd been here this long, the odds were he was already running late.

"Whatever," mumbled Doumeki. As if to change the subject, he added, "So, what was it that chased you to school this morning?"

"What? Nothing chased me to school!" Watanuki snapped, right on cue. "I don't even know why you'd think that."

"You were at school earlier than anyone else today. When I arrived you were still panting," Doumeki reminded him.

"It's none of your business if I was! Which I wasn't! And there was nothing chasing me!"

"You've been looking at the school gate like it's going to eat you all day. When Kunogi suggested we eat outside, you started flailing like a lunatic and picked a place on the other side of the school grounds."

"You are a crazy person who keeps imagining crazy things!"

"Is that where it's waiting for you?" Doumeki suggested mildly. "The school gate?"

"I have no idea what you think you're on about."

Watanuki stalked through the school gate with the sort of focused determination of an invading army general. It was a good thing, Doumeki reflected, that there was no-one in his way, because Watanuki was putting so much effort into not looking at _anything_ that may-or-may-not have been lurking at the side of the road that anyone who wasn't standing exactly in a very narrow field of view would very likely have been trampled before Watanuki so much as noticed they were there.

"When do you get off work tonight?" asked Doumeki, after they'd left the gate a safe distance behind them.

"After nine," was Watanuki's reply. "But I don't know why you'd want to know that, because it isn't like I need you to walk me home or anything like that."

"Because there's no danger there'll be anything waiting for you outside the shop when you finish either?" Doumeki finished for him.

"Why would there be? That's a ridiculous suggestion. Of course not!"

Doumeki gives this a few moments thought. "I'm going to have an errand to run that's going to take me past the shop at about nine tonight," he says carefully.

"Oh really."

"And then probably past your place," Doumeki adds.

"I don't know why you're telling me."

"So that you're not surprised to see me when I show up."

"I'm sure I won't even notice you're there," Watanuki declares, haughtily enough to thoroughly disguise anything that might have been even close to relief or gratitude in his voice.

Satisfied, Doumeki lapsed into silence for the rest of the journey. That was the evening sorted out. If the spirit was still a problem tomorrow, they would sort it out then.


	2. Ficlet 2

Watanuki had to have been in one of his odd moods that day (the sort where he was still angry, but not at Doumeki or anything he'd done specifically, which always made a nice change) because the first thing he said after plonking himself down at their usual spot at lunchtime was, "So, _hypothetically_, how many times does a person have to save your life before you get to call them by their first name?"

Doumeki gave the unexpected question appropriate consideration.

After there'd been silence long enough for the new arrival to unpack, open and begin to eat his lunch, Watanuki said, "Well?"

"I'm doing a tally," Doumeki told him.

Watanuki grimaced. "Oh no. That's going to take a while, isn't it?"

"Could do."

There was silence again, excepting only the sounds of chewing.

"Not that I want to break your concentration," said Watanuki, once 'a while' was thoroughly past, "but you must be up to triple figures by now, and I know it can't have been that many simply because I _haven't known you long enough_."

"I could be double checking my total," Doumeki suggested.

"An approximate number would be perfectly fine, you know," Watanuki complained, "there's no need to drag it out just to…"

"One," Doumeki decided he was happy with the answer he had.

"One?" Watanuki sounded appropriately disbelieving. "That's your answer? _One?_"

"Maybe twice for use in public," Doumeki amended.

"It took you that long to count to _one_?"

Doumeki shrugged. "I don't really keep score of things like that."

"But… once?" said Watanuki, probably still finding this something of a cop-out of an answer. "But even I must have saved _your_ life more than once…oh. Right."

"Yeah," said Doumeki. "You have."


	3. Ficlet 3

Over at her livejournal, the ever-talented **ficcentricity** (believe me, you _want _to go check out her work) posted a couple of orphaned fic snippets in the hope of finding someone to adopt them.

One of them involved a Ferris wheel:

* * *

Watanuki does not think being trapped in a small, enclosed space with petty, vengeful spirits while suspended in mid-air is romantic, but Himawari is very enthusiastic about the new Ferris Wheel the local theme park had acquired.

"I have tickets!" she announces, and Watanuki's heart flips over, the conquest complete.

"I'm so happy for you, Himawari-chan!"

She smiles at him and says, regretfully, "I wish I could go," and lets the sentence hang.

Could it be? Was Himawari-chan...?

"I'd love to go!" Watanuki says eagerly.

"Oh, I'm so glad! Now the tickets won't go to waste. And I can give the other one to Doumeki-kun."

"Wait, what?"

"Have fun!"

* * *

Actually, I didn't really so much adopt it as discover that the thing had latched on to my ankle and was refusing to let go, but either way, this is what resulted:

* * *

So this is how Watanuki winds up sitting in what is the very last of a long, personal list of amusement park rides he never wanted to go on, left with the question of whether being suspended in mid air, stuck in a small, enclosed space with hostile spirits is preferable to being stuck in that same enclosed space with one Doumeki Shizuka. The correct answer is 'no', but he doesn't have to be happy about it, and he's becoming less sure with every minute that passes up here.

Watanuki loves Himawari-chan, he really, really does, he would have braved even the vengeful spirits of the medium-levels of the atmosphere for the chance to spend some time alone with her. There's no way he could have turned those tickets down with her looking so enthusiastic, but it's currently weighing heavily against his remaining faith of the good will of the universe that he's having to wonder whether the fact she thought it was a good idea to send him up here with _Doumeki_ of all people should be taken as evidence that the love of his life is clinically insane. Doumeki may have agreed without trouble (and that's something Watanuki is going to examine if and when he first gets hit by a suitably insulting idea explaining why) but it should be patently obvious to anyone that Doumeki is not an amusement park ride sort of person. So far Doumeki has yet to so much as glance at the view out the window, he's spent the entire ride staring at a spot slightly above Watanuki's left ear, and to say this is making Watanuki twitchy is to dangerously understate. Watanuki has made it through this so far by avoiding acknowledging that Doumeki is present (which would be a hell of a lot easier if Doumeki would stop giving him half the impression he might be doing the same thing back) while mentally dividing their journey into sixteenths and counting them off as they get through them. So far, they're barely five sixteenths gone, and he's already starting to boil.

The whole 'not speaking to Doumeki' plan is not going well. Its main success would be to keep everything in Watanuki's head under pressure for so long that what eventually escaped first was bound to be the most inane thing possible. This is all the explanation there will ever be as to why, at seven sixteenths through the journey, Watanuki turns to Doumeki, red faced, and said "Damnit, you – you – you – STOP TAKING UP SO MUCH SPACE!"

There was silence in the car long enough for the echoes to die down, for the universe's personal transcriber of Stupid Things Watanuki Has Said to copy that sentence down in its entirety (with special note of the very near equal space taken up by both boys in the booth, with only minor corrections for body mass) and for Watanuki to completely fail to come up with a way travel far enough back through time to shove something other than his foot in his own mouth and stop himself from talking.

"Don't you have enough space to flail around in here?" Doumeki asks, idly. He must save those stock looks of utter contempt just for use around Watanuki or something, the bastard.

"I AM NOT FLAILING!"

"Which is because there's no room. Or you would be."

A firm grasp of irony has never been Watanuki's strongest point, nor has an even temper, both of which are a big part of why he does what he does next.

From the ground, those watching the Ferris wheel at this point might have noticed car #22 lurch forward unexpectedly, then swing back and forth a few times until it loses its momentum again.

Back inside, Watanuki waits long enough that he feels like the they've stopped moving and he can be relatively sure he knows which way is up, then very deliberately and very slowly sits back down again. He has a horrible feeling that no matter what sort of look Doumeki might be giving him, the other boy is laughing on the inside.

"You shouldn't have gone on this ride if you were claustrophobic," says Doumeki.

"It was Himawari-chan's idea!" Watanuki shrieks back, as if this should explain everything perfectly (to his mind, it does).

"That didn't mean you had to agree."

"IT DIDN'T MEAN YOU HAD TO EITHER!"

Watanuki is surprised there was no response to this, then gives up on being surprised and decides to be grateful. He fixes his eyes firmly on the lights of a distant stall which is, thanks to the ever creative distortion of distance, apparently selling barbecued penguins or something, and tells himself that he isn't looking anywhere else until they're safely back on the ground.

A minute later, the wheel clears its tenth sixteenth, and the stall disappears from view behind a giant metal spoke. Watanuki switches his gaze to a star-shaped dent in the scratchy plastic window at approximately eye level and tells himself the same thing again.

They're just coming up on that all important fourteenth sixteenth that means they could really, honestly, get out of this alive before Watanuki spontaneously combusts, when Doumeki says, "So, I get to pick what we're doing next, right?"

Here Watanuki is in a small box which is 100 per cent spirit free, but also contains 100 per cent more Doumeki than Watanuki wants to deal with, and it is as far from romantic as he can possibly imagine.


	4. Ficlet 4

Out of the blue one day – or, close enough to that there is no way of guessing what prompted it – Watanuki informs him curtly that they could be dating if he (meaning Doumeki) wanted them to be.

Actually, since it's Watanuki, what he really says is closer to, WE COULD BE DATING IF YOU WANTED US TO BE, but the gist is much the same.

This puts Doumeki off his stride a little. He's accustomed to receiving sentiments of that nature – usually delivered by nervous-looking girls at locations he wouldn't usually have chosen to meet in – but not expressed in that sort of manner, nor by anyone who's company he (for reasons he can't begin to analyse) actually enjoys.

"Dating," he repeats, even though he's quite sure he hasn't misheard. Watanuki operating at that volume is difficult not to hear.

"I'm sure you've heard of the concept," says Watanuki curtly.

Naturally he has, but in his experience, dates are something that happen to other people – a category excluding both him _and_ Watanuki.

"Did Yuuko say something to you?" is the first question that pops into Doumeki's head. It doesn't seem to be what Watanuki wanted to hear.

"Yuuko?" Watanuki blurts, close to being back at full volume. "Why should _she_ have to have anything to do with it? _Can't I want to date someone without it being her fault?_"

"Beats me," says Doumeki, with perfect honesty.

"It's a very normal thing for a teenage boy to want to do!" Watanuki informs him.

Doumeki thinks 'very normal' is the last description that would ever apply to Watanuki. He doesn't think this conversation is doing anything to improve that.

"When we spend any time alone together, it's usually because of something Yuuko said," Doumeki says with a shrug.

"That's only because she's sending me somewhere where if you're _not_ there then there will be no-one to rescue me from the thing that wants to eat me alive!" Watanuki reminds him. "A real _date_, in case you didn't realise, is when that sort of thing doesn't happen!"

While there's a definite truth to this that Doumeki can't ignore, what results is a gap in the conversation at this point where he fails to come up with a reply, and Watanuki remembers to inhale enough times to calm down slightly.

"Besides, who else am I supposed to date around here?" he says at last, only marginally more subdued.

"What about Himawari?" suggests Doumeki, then instantly regrets it, though he's not sure how he could have avoided that particular elephant looming in the background of this conversation.

Watanuki goes an interesting colour. "It's not that… I mean, you know I couldn't go out with her even if I wanted…" he stammers out helplessly – for the first time since this subject came up, answering something appears to be giving him real difficulty. "…And if I don't want to anymore it's your fault anyway!"

Doumeki has to take another moment to process this, because Watanuki has just given him a lot more information even he may have intended. "I didn't realise," he says, distractedly, because he's being forced to wonder whether there have been facets of Watanuki's recent behaviour which he should have interpreted in a different light.

Watanuki makes a 'hmph' sort of noise.

"You haven't said anything about this before," says Doumeki.

"It's not my fault if I have to spell things out for you before you catch on," Watanuki grumbles, then, in that subdued tone from before adds, "Do you want to go out with me or not?"

Doumeki has now spent the whole conversation stalling for time, and still has to think about how to answer that question. The truth is that the possibility simply hadn't occurred to him before, and it's seriously unfair of Watanuki to be expecting him to figure it all out so quickly, so he thinks he's perfectly justified in leaving his answer somewhere in the shades of vague.

"I'm not the dating sort," he says honestly, but before Watanuki's face can fall any further, adds, "but if you want to spend more time together outside of Yuuko's errands and school, that's fine with me."

"Fine?" Watanuki repeats.

"I'd like that," Doumeki clarifies.

Watanuki looks suspicious. "If this is another of those things where it's all about my cooking or you like seeing me make a fool of myself…"

"Those aren't the only reasons," Doumeki admits.

Watanuki doesn't reply, probably because he's trying to figure out exactly what Doumeki has agreed to. Doumeki decides it won't kill him to maybe make his position a little clearer.

"Of course, if you wanted to invite me around for dinner sometime…" he says.

"Argh! I knew it! You are officially the cheapest date ever!"

"I'll buy you the ingredients if you want," Doumeki offers.

"As if that was the point!" Watanuki shrieks.

Doumeki spends the rest of the conversation with his fingers in his ears.

What Doumeki doesn't say is that he would quite happily eat Watanuki's cooking every day for the rest of his life, but bringing that up might be getting ahead of himself a bit. It would mean he'd have to decide what he meant by it himself, for a start.

* * *

Watanuki was working late that night, however, the next day after school, Doumeki finds him waiting at the gate, where he proceeds to declare that Doumeki had damn well better have money of him, and that they're going to the shops together because obviously Doumeki will only buy all the wrong things if he isn't under supervision, and no he does not get to pick what they're eating! Doumeki makes a few helpful suggestions anyway. Watanuki tells him exactly what his chances are of getting each one.

If this is what dating Watanuki was going to be like, Doumeki decides it might be worth it. Time spent around Watanuki is always good entertainment and culinary value, and they can figure out the rest as they go along.


End file.
